As America celebrates its 233rd birthday this holiday weekend, there will be an extra light in the sky along with the fireworks. Across the country, Americans will be treated to spectacular views of the International Space Station as it orbits 220 miles above Earth.Many locations will have unusually long sighting opportunities of as much as five minutes, weather permitting, as the station flies almost directly overhead. To find out when to see the station from your city, visit: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings The largest spacecraft...

Three members of the International Space Station crew will board a Soyuz spacecraft attached to the station and move it to a different docking port on Thursday, July 2. The journey will be broadcast live on NASA Television.Expedition 20 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineers Mike Barratt of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will undock the Soyuz TMA-14 return spacecraft, from the Zvezda service module and fly a short distance to the Pirs docking compartment. The flight is expected to take about 30 minutes.NASA...

The crescent Earth rises above the lunar horizon in this spectacular photograph taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft in lunar orbit during final lunar landing mission in the Apollo progr...

Ulysses, a joint NASA and European Space Agency mission, officially ceased operations today, after receiving commands from ground controllers to do so. The spacecraft, which operated for more than 18 years, charted the unexplored regions of space above the poles of the sun. As planned via commands beamed to the spacecraft earlier in the day, Ulysses switched to its low-gain antenna at 1:09 p.m. PDT (4:09 p.m. EDT, or 2009 UTC). As a result, ground controllers were no longer able to pick up a signal...

NASA's Cassini mission has been orbiting Saturn for five Earth years as of June 30, 2009. That's about one sixth of a Saturnian year, enough time for the spacecraft to have observed seasonal changes in the planet, its moons and sunlight's angle on the dramatic rings.Cassini passed through a gap in the rings as it entered orbit on June 30, 2004. It finished its prime mission in 2008 and continues to use its 12 instruments in an extended mission that includes extensive further studies of the moons...

A United Launch Alliance Delta IV with the NASA/NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-O launched on June 27, 2009, from Space Launch Complex-37, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. GOES-O will provide more accurate prediction and tracking of severe storms and other weather phenomena, resulting in earlier and more precise warnings to the publ...

NASA and Japan released a new digital topographic map of Earth Monday that covers more of our planet than ever before. The map was produced with detailed measurements from NASA's Terra spacecraft.The new global digital elevation model of Earth was created from nearly 1.3 million individual stereo-pair images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or Aster, instrument aboard Terra. NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, known as...

Imagine watching all of the tropical depressions, storms and hurricanes of 2008 as they formed in the Atlantic Ocean Basin and either faded at sea or made landfall. Thanks to NASA technology and satellite data coupled with data from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operated satellite, you can see the tracks of storms from Arthur to Paloma from birth to death.There were 17 tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Hurricane Season, which includes the North Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean...

NASA has selected nine men and women for the 2009 astronaut candidate cla...

After reviewing more than 3500 applications, NASA has selected nine men and women for the 2009 astronaut candidate class. They will begin training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston, in August.“This is a very talented and diverse group we've selected,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for Space Operations. “They will join our current astronauts and play very important roles for NASA in the future. In addition to flying in space, astronauts participate in every aspect of...

The GOES-O weather satellite is on its own following a successful separation from the Delta IV second stage. The separation occurred soon after the second stage performed the final of three burns to place the GOES-O spacecraft in a transfer orbit that will eventually reach about 22,300 miles above Earth. The satellite will be checked out through a series of tests in coming weeks. The GOES-O launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., at 6:51 p.m. EDT aboard a Delta IV rocket.‬GOES-O Reaches...

Survey any number of airline passengers and you may not hear the most positive reaction to air travel these days. Seats are cramped. Planes are crowded. And don't even get anybody started on delays, security procedures or extra costs. So what would possess anyone to live on an airplane for a month and endure 30 days of conditions many people would prefer to avoid? Meet Mark Malkoff. The 33-year-old comedian/writer/filmmaker is staying on an AirTran airplane the entire month of June and sharing...

On May 28 at 2:24 a.m. local time, a deadly earthquake rocked Honduras, killing seven people and injuring several others, demolishing homes, damaging scores of other buildings, and sending terrified residents running through the streets."I woke up immediately, and all I could do was hug my youngest son and pray," says Dalia Martinez of San Pedro Sula, Honduras. "After a few minutes, my family and I went outside, where my neighbors were already gathered, likewise terrified about what happened but...

The Herschel Space Observatory has snapped its first picture since blasting into space on May 14, 2009. The mission, led by the European Space Agency with important participation from NASA, will use infrared light to explore our cosmic roots, addressing questions of how stars and galaxies are born.The new "sneak preview" image was taken in an early attempt to demonstrate that Herschel works, and, in particular, that its telescope is focused and correctly aligned with the science instruments, and...

Ulysses, a joint NASA and European Space Agency mission, will officially cease operations Monday, June 30, when the command to switch off the transmitter is uplinked to the spacecraft. Ulysses, which operated for more than 18 years, had charted the unexplored regions of space above the poles of the sun.The Ulysses orbital path is carrying the spacecraft away from Earth. The ever-widening gap has progressively limited the amount of data transmitted. Ulysses project managers, with the concurrence...

Satellite, Now Entering Its Second Decade, Has Revolutionized Marine Weather Forecasts"June is busting out all over," as the song says, and with it, U.S. residents along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts begin to gaze warily toward the ocean, aware that the hurricane season is revving up. In the decade since NASA's QuikScat satellite and its SeaWinds scatterometer launched in June 1999, the satellite has measured the wind speed and wind direction of these powerful storms, providing data that are increasingly...

NASA's Mars rover Spirit, lodged in Martian soil that is causing traction trouble, is taking advantage of the situation by learning more about the Red Planet's environmental history.In April, Spirit entered an area composed of three or more layers of soil with differing pastel hues hiding beneath a darker sand blanket. Scientists dubbed the site "Troy." Spirit's rotating wheels dug themselves more than hub deep at the site. The rover team has spent weeks studying Spirit's situation and preparing...

With the whoosh of compressed gas and the whir of unspooling wire, a team of Boulder scientists and engineers tested a new instrument prototype that might be used to detect groundwater deep inside Mars. The Mars Time Domain Electromagnetic Sounder (MTDEM) uses induction to generate electrical currents in the ground, whose secondary magnetic fields are in turn detected at the planetary surface. In this way, the electrical conductivity of the subsurface can be reconstructed. "Groundwater that has...

Galaxy formation in the early universe just became a little less mysterious.Cosmologists already knew the big picture. In the several hundred million years after the Big Bang, matter in the expanding universe began falling together into clumps; littler clumps within the clumps fell in on themselves to form the first stars; and many of the original clumps eventually coalesced into bigger pools to make modern-sized galaxies.But why did galaxies come out the size they did, rather than staying small...

When residents of the top floors of JPL's new Flight Projects Center look out their windows down to the roof of the building's auditorium, they won't see black tar. Instead, they'll witness what looks more like Joshua Tree, Calif. -- desert, drought-resistant plants dotting sandy ground.The plants do more than enhance the view; they are part of the building's many "green" features. In fact, the building is so green that JPL is going for the gold -- a gold certification, that is, under the Leadership...

The "coming of age" of galaxies and black holes has been pinpointed, thanks to new data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. This discovery helps resolve the true nature of gigantic blobs of gas observed around very young galaxies.About a decade ago, astronomers discovered immense reservoirs of hydrogen gas -- which they named "blobs" – while conducting surveys of young distant galaxies. The blobs are glowing brightly in optical light, but the source of immense energy required...